George Brant Bridgman (November 5, 1864 – December 16, 1943)
Life and work
Bridgman was born in 1864 in the United Province of Canada.
In his youth, Bridgman studied the arts under painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and later with Gustave Boulanger.
For most of his life Bridgman lived in the
United States where he taught
anatomy and
figure drawing at the Art Students League of New York (from 1898 until 1900, and then 1903 until October 1943).
His successor at Art Students League was Robert Beverly Hale. Bridgman had also taught classes at the Grand Central School of Art and at the
ABCorp.
Bridgman used box forms to represent the major masses of the figure (head, thorax, and pelvis) which he would tie together with gestural lines and produce to create "wedges" or simplified interconnecting forms of the body.[ "George Brandt Bridgman at Askart.com"]
He had been a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Notable students
Among his many thousands of students was
Norman Rockwell;
in his autobiography,
My Adventures as an Illustrator (1960), Rockwell spoke highly of Bridgman. Roughly 70,000 students studied with Bridgman in his many years of teaching,
notable artists include: McClelland Barclay,
Emily Newton Barto,
[Petteys, Chris, Dictionary of Women Artists: An international dictionary of women artists born before 1900, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1985 p. 47] C. C. Beall,
Gifford Beal,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton Blake,
Rosina Cox Boardman,
[McGlauflin, Alice Coe, ed., Who’s Who in American Art 1938-193 vol.2, The American Federation of Arts, Washington D.C., 1937 p. 61] Bessie Callender,
[Petteys, Chris, Dictionary of Women Artists: An international dictionary of women artists born before 190, G.K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1985 p. 116] Dane Chanase,
[McGlauflin, Alice Coe, ed., ‘’Who’s Who in American Art 1938-193 vol.2, The American Federation of Arts, Washington D.C., 1937 p. 102] Richard V. Culter,
Chon Day, Joseph Delaney,
,
Eyre de Lanux,
Helen Winslow Durkee,
Will Eisner, Edward McNeil Farmer,
,
Marion Greenwood,
Robert Beverly Hale,
,
Clark Hulings, Louis Paul Jonas,
[Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, 1968 p. 195] Jack Kamen, Deane Keller,
Lee Krasner,
,
,
Anita Malfatti,
Paul Manship,
[Rand, Harry, Paul Manship, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington 1989 p. 10] Frank McCarthy,
Evelyn Metzger,
Earl Moran, John Cullen Murphy, Kimon Nicolaïdes,
Corrado Parducci,
, Frank J. Reilly, Joseph Emile Renier,
[Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, 1968 p. 338] Ulysses Ricci,
Ernie Schroeder, Archie Boyd Teater,
Allie Tennant,
[Proske, Beatrice Gilman, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens, 1968 p. 479] John Vassos, Franklin Brooke Voss, Edmund Ward,
,
[Toone, Thomas E., Mahonri Young: His Life and Art, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1997 p. 36-37] and
William Zorach.
[Zorach, William, Art is My Life: The Autobiography of William Zorach, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland Ohio, 1967 p.21]
Jackson Pollock's sketchpad features work from Bridgman's books.
Death and legacy
Bridgman died on December 16, 1943, in New Rochelle, New York, after suffering from an illness for a year.
He was survived by his wife, Helene Leonora Bridgman (née Rupperstberg) and their three children.
George Bridgman has 100 drawings in the public collection at the Norman Rockwell Museum.
Bibliography
Many of Bridgman's books are available as reprints by Dover Publications.
External links
